Images courtesy of Legions of Will
I’ve reviewed a few indie games before for various outlets. Games like Spell Saga immediately spring to mind, for example. I covered that one for an easily searchable outlet, so I will spare you the hyperlink and recommend you find that yourself. But with all my expertise in game reviews and hype pieces, I’ve never reviewed a game created so close to home before. Enter: Legions of Will.
Legions of Will is a trading card game created in Rochester, NY, by Anthony DeVola. The game is, in essence, a base defense game with themes of resource management and bluffing. The game takes a lot of inspiration from Magic: The Gathering while finding its own path aesthetically. The game’s aesthetics largely draw from historical conspiracies and cryptid hunts. But how does this game ultimately play out, or measure up to the biggest games that are currently on the market? Let’s find out.
Legions of Will Gameplay
Off the bat, Legions of Will plays much like a tit-for-tat tower defense. You begin the game with three bases, one of which is played face up while the other two are face down. The primary win condition of the game is to turn all three of an opponent’s bases face down.
Bases
In the game, bases have three stats: Defense, Capacity, and Resource. Defense is how much damage a base can maintain in one turn before it’s turned face down and rendered inert. Capacity dictates how many friendly units, upgrades, and traps can occupy your own base, and Resource is how many resources are provided by the base at the start of each of your turns. Resources are aptly named, and act similarly to Magic‘s mana system, except resources don’t deplete between phases or turns and cap out at 20.
Units
Units, the primary representative characters and items of the game, are used for various purposes. Most are character cards, which are used to attack opposing bases. However, there are also units that represent items.
Attacking with units requires a nuanced sequence to succeed. For each attacking unit, you must roll a 12-sided die. If the result is equal to or higher than the attacking unit’s Will stat, located next to its Power, the unit successfully attacks its target (this could be an enemy unit or a base). Otherwise, the attack does not occur. After that, the unit deals damage to the other card, oftentimes destroying it or rendering it inert.
Non-Base, Non-Unit Cards
Other cards like upgrades or traps can occupy bases. Upgrades are attached face up and provide a lasting effect to the base while that base is face up as well. Conversely, you attach traps face down and, upon meeting criteria, can turn them face up and discard them for an effect. Finally, action cards have a one-time use and are discarded after that. All of the above cards often cost resources, though there are some exceptions.
Rarity plays a factor in deckbuilding for the game as well. You can only run legendary cards (the game’s highest rarity) in singleton. This facilitates greater freedom in design for legendary cards and a less broken or linear progression of gameplay, which is a huge plus in my book.
Gameplay Review
I’ve played a demo of Legions of Will in recent days, and I couldn’t quite get the full hang of the game. That said, I completely flung myself into the demo and was using a deck that was decidedly unfamiliar to me in a game that was just as unfamiliar, against Anthony DeVola himself, the creator of both the decks and the game. I was certainly outmatched in scope and scale. All that to say, I may need to do more research before I can say definitively whether this game is at all imbalanced.
However, I liked the game’s flow. There was a good degree of give and take to it, and no cards appeared more broken than any other. This bodes well for a game like Legions of Will, especially if DeVola wants the game to garner any success in the mainstream games industry.
Aesthetics
Legions of Will has a theme of historical conspiracies to it. From Biblically-accurate angels and demons to Atlanteans and subterranean worlds, the game revels in mysteries. Emily DeVola, the creator’s spouse, illustrated many of the cards in the game. This was a home-cultivated game, and I mean that in the best ways. The art is not all Magic-quality, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for an indie card game.
My main critique of the aesthetics of the game is that it lacks a certain degree of overall consistency. While many of the cards look amazing, there is an issue where some cards look very different in comparison to the chase cards of the game. Consequently, I would wonder if that means fewer people run some more optimal cards due to oversight.
The other issue I have with the aesthetics of Legions of Will comes from my colorblindness. Like with certain cards in Magic with, if a color is meant to convey something, there needs to be more than just the color conveying that thing. As such, the numbers for bases and upgrades don’t mean much to me offhand without something providing meaning beyond the colors of the circular borders. It feels unintuitive for bases’ numbers to read from left to right but upgrades’ numbers to read from bottom to top.
Community
While playing, DeVola informed me during the demo that the game has an extremely widespread community. There are many players across the United States and even a few overseas. They’ve got a burgeoning Discord server and cards sell relatively well on the secondary market for an indie card game. This is vital for the health and longevity of this game, even more than healthy gameplay or crisp aesthetics. As such, the game’s community left a great impression on me.
Our Verdict on Legions of Will
Overall, I liked the demonstration of this game. The game’s community left a lasting impression, especially how supportive the players were both towards DeVola and each other. The game has a couple of hitches to fix, but I have it on good authority that a small game revamp may be forthcoming.
Every so often, someone from your home town finds their place in this wide world. It’s up to their neighbors to foster and support them. Anthony DeVola found that niche with Legions of Will, and it falls upon the game’s community to lift his work. The game is great, and if that community expands, the game may find greater, more mainstream success.
